We’re excited to introduce AWS Direct Connect, a new service that allows enterprises to establish a dedicated network connection from their datacenter, office or colocation environment to AWS. AWS Direct Connect allows you to bypass the public Internet when connecting to AWS, which in many cases can reduce your network costs, improve bandwidth throughput and provide a more consistent network experience.

With each AWS Direct Connect connection, you can configure one or more logical connections that allow you to access public AWS resources (such as S3 buckets) and/or reach private VPC networks. AWS Direct Connect is compatible with all AWS services, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS).

AWS Direct Connect can be very useful in a variety of scenarios. Applications that require large and frequent data transfers to and from AWS or require more predictable network performance (real-time feeds for audio and video) can benefit from AWS Direct Connect. AWS Direct Connect also allows you to leverage your existing investment in equipment (such as SAN/NAS devices) by connecting them to AWS through a dedicated network connection.

AWS Direct Connect has one location available today, located at Equinix’s Ashburn, Virginia colocation facility. From this location, you can connect to services in the AWS US-East (Virginia) region. Additional AWS Direct Connect locations are planned for San Jose, Los Angeles, London, Tokyo and Singapore in the next several months.